This invention relates to an electronic cash register apparatus (referred to hereinafter as an ECR) capable of assessing the "validity" or "invalidity" of employees or register operators (referred to hereinafter as cashiers) who are in charge of the ECR.
A conventional ECR of this kind stores information with regard to individual cashiers, and a method for registering cashiers in such an ECR is already known. According to this known method, personal cashier numbers and/or personal identification numbers of the individual cashiers are stored beforehand in a memory of the ECR, and, when one of the cashiers starts to operate the ECR, this specific cashier is registered in the ECR.
FIG. 1 is a flow chart showing the operation of the prior art ECR.
As shown in FIG. 1, the personal cashier number and/or the personal identification number of the cashier are supplied as input data in a step 71. In a step 72, the input data is collated with the stored information regarding the individual cashiers, and, in a step 73, whether the input data is correct or not is decided. If the input is not correct, the input data is discarded in a step 76, and the error is displayed in a step 77 to complete the operation. On the other hand, if the input data is correct, processing for registering the amount of sales is continued in a step 74 until the operation of the ECR ends in a step 75.
However, in the prior art ECR, the validity or invalidity of the registration of a cashier was only determined on the basis of "whether or not the personal cashier number of the cashier is registered already?" or "whether or not the personal cashier number and the personal identification number coincide with those registered already?". Once the information regarding the individual cashiers was stored in the ECR, to be used for the decision of validity or invalidity, it was not easy to alter this information. Therefore, any one could freely operate the ECR, provided that the personal cashier number or both the personal cashier number and the personal identification number coincided with the number or numbers that were registered. This means that, although a personal identification number was employed, a cashier having a personal cashier number coinciding with that registered could easily operate the ECR. Furthermore a cashier who knew the personal identification number of another cashier having another personal cashier number could easily operate the ECR using the personal cashier number of the other cashier. Thus, there was a management problem with regard to the money received in the drawer of the ECR.
Some practical examples are: "a cashier A used the personal cashier number of a cashier B and stole money from the drawer of the ECR", "a cashier A used his or her own personal cashier number to steal money from the drawer of the ECR during off-duty time and insisted that someone else used his or her own personal cashier number", "a cashier A using the personal cashier number of another cashier B made a registration cancelling procedure during accounting, and after receiving the proper amount of money from the customer, embezzled the money" and so on. Thus, the problem arose that, when a cashier was illegally registered as a register operator, the responsibility of the cashier could not be clarified on the record, such as a journal, and it was difficult to properly manage the money received in the drawer of the ECR.